I almost managed to get the weekly recap in last night, but my laptop wasn’t charged, and the charger was all the way downstairs. You can see the bind I was in.
Reminder to those who weren’t lucky enough to get an ARC, now you can finally get The Summer I Met Jack by the fabulous Michelle Gable. This is going to be the love-read of the summer.
Woman Last Seen In Her Thirties turned out to be such a dud. I am always up for this kind of novel: woman of a certain age, divorce, identity crisis, etc. But everything about this was dull. These characters have no personality, especially not Adam, who’s allegedly so charming and irresistible. That was all tell, no show. This was boring and went nowhere and I’m annoyed I even read it.
Lots of personality on display in How To Set Yourself On Fire. I really liked this author’s style. This main character is troubled and challenging in a constantly interesting way. I loved all her interactions with people in this book. The only thing that I didn’t love was that pretty much the entire story is about her reading through her deceased grandmother’s old letters and trying to piece together the backstory. I would have liked that to be the side plot instead of the main plot. But still, I enjoyed this very much and it had a nice, emotional ending.
A lot of people have been recommending Everything Is Horrible And Wonderful to me. Weird, I wonder why that is! So I guess there’s no better time than the end of May for me to read a memoir about the untimely death of a sibling. There was a lot I could relate to, especially the stuff about raising a toddler while mourning a brother…very specific bruise press there. I loved her writing, and I loved how she portrayed their relationship. I didn’t know much about Harris Wittels going in, and she really did a great job with this warts and all depiction of him. I hope she does a lot more writing, I’m an instant Stephanie Wittels Wachs fan for life. Also, TMZ deserves to be burned to the ground.
Today I’m finishing up The Home For Unwanted Girls right now. Sad to say, this book really needs an edit. The writing is mostly pretty good, although the relationship between Maggie and Gabriel does not really deliver the way it tries to. The story is fine, but it is really dragging on. I thought I’d like this a lot but it’s just so-so for me. I’m eager to finish it up because I have so many summer reading titles waiting for me. Summer is finally here!!!!!
